Should I go down the legal route with harassment

[SMJYellow]

I have one sister. She is living and working away from home in a different county.

My sister was a difficult person for a long time. Falling in and out from the family for a number of years. One wouldn't have to sneeze or go to the loo for her to take offense and then not speak a again for months and snub and silently intimate around the house. That was when she was living at home. Thankfully she is not at home any more.

Currently she is not getting on with anyone in the family bar one. The rest of us she's not talking to anyone of us. All for different reasons.

However it's me and my back that's getting a hammering from her.

Going back a few Christmas's ago, I had a row with her. I made an effort to make amends but she snubbed me. In the months that followed she never spoke to me and snubbed me. She made it very clear to me she wanted nothing to do with me and I was dead to her. It was like a soap opera script from her.

Harassment from my sister began. Abusive, threatening messages. I never responded to any because there was so much anger coming through in them. The messages were thick and strong and came in on and off over a few months. She set up a fake as on a selling site with my details and number.

I changed my number and she started sending the abuse into my email. There was a fake Facebook profile set up.

Anyways, all this died down throughout 2016. At the end of last year, she got my new number. The abusive messages has started up again since the beginning of this year. The messages went on and off for months. Also accompanied by private number calls.

This eventually got to much and I went to the police station. I was talking to a helpful officer who went into details about my options. He explained there are two routes for me

1. informal route - which involves phoning her up and giving her a warning
2. formal route - where I give a statement, she is arrested, an investigation starts, and she receives a summons to court.

I'm apprehensive about going down the formal route. I took the decision of the informal way. That was around about 6 weeks ago.

The weekend after I spoke with the officer, her shit increased tenfold.

I found a setting on my phone for call forwarding and I forwarded all calls to voicemail. That setting is now activated nearly all the time. On the rare occasion I need to take it off and I would get a private number ll would come through.

The messages have stopped. However there is fake profile after fake profile being set up on Facebook and she's continuing the abuse through Facebook messenger. I just block her.

Her messages are crazy. She's talking over and over and over again about me and my nasty behaviour. She's holding onto the row we had that Christmas and demanding for apologies. I'm not responsible for this woman's happiness and to be quite honest she needs to move on and without me too. If only she would go back and read her messages and she where the nasty really is.

I have uneven breasts. I'm ok about it but it seems to bother my sister. She likes to take pictures of her tits and send them to me - with some sort of a question about me being jealous of them. That's just one example of the many abusive messages.

I was hoping a call from a police officer would be enough for my sister for her to sit up and listen and move on. This hasn't worked. She didn't listen at all the officer.

I feel now at this stage I have no other option of going down the formal route but this route I don't want to go down on. What do you think I should do?

She sounds mentally ill. However, her abuse of you is terrible. I would go down the formal route now as I don't think anything else will stop her.

I have no idea about this kind of thing, but it sounds incredibly upsetting.

I'd go down the formal route. It can't be good for your mental health to be subject to that sort of abuse.

Her use of your details to set-up fake accounts could damage your reputation & financially harm you.

I would now go down the formal route; there is really no other option for you here.

I would also go down the formal route. You tried ignoring it, you tried a warning with the police and it hasn't worked.
You don't deserve this harassment all the time.

Formal.

Are you reporting the fake profiles to Facebook?

I don't think you have a choice really - it's only getting worse by the sound of it. You can't live your life like that.

Can you set your Facebook account so that you can't receive messages from people you don't know? I would do this along with the formal route.

Formal.

She needs help I too second mental health issues - she's crying out for love but can't put this into words the only way she can get attention is in a negative way. She hates herself deeply for whatever reason she wants to know that someone loves her despite how awful she is - this will all go back to childhood dynamics - why is she in another country- maybe she really is not coping but for whatever reason she cannot say this - instead it comes out in the only context she knows how.

She needs to know someone cares for her - the police involvement will not help probably escalate her feelings of self hatred and that she is even more alone than she already feels

Thank you for your lovely replies.

When I went to the station in August, it was really long over due. I ignored the abuse for so long hoping she would go away and move on. That never happened though. She persisted. At that stage, I was worried for myself and my life too. She has so much hatred and vitriol and I'm worried that she's going down the route of sabotaging the good relationships that I do have in my life. In recent times she started dishing drama down to others. Like we have a brother in Australia and she started contacting him with dirt saying how nasty I am. Oh my god, all I'm doing is ignoring harassment and getting on with my life.

I do think there is something behind it all. Some sort of a mental health issue. I saw nothing but crazy in her going back over two years ago. I mentioned it to our mother but our mother doesn't want to know. All our mother wants is peace really.

On one hand I think there's something driving it but then other times I think it's pure badness more than madness. The fact she can hold down a job, rental accommodation and goes away on regular holidays tells me that her behaviour is more badness. If it was madness, how can she hide that from such a huge portion in her life?

So anyways, I got fake profile after fake profile on Facebook over the weekend the just gone. I kept blocking them. I reported them too but Facebook is pure useless. There are so many fake profiles from her allowed to remain up.

She seems to have cooled things down for now but this was the pattern of harassment. It was on and off for a long time.

I have a week off at the end of this month. I'm going to make an appointment at the police station for sometime that week. It will give me time as well to buy a new phone but I'll have to hand this one in. Its a route a really don't want to go on but at this stage I feel I have no other option.